In the early 1940´s some public health officials were not quite convinced
of the safety of fluorides, as reflected in the discussion among committee
members of the Newburgh/Kingston experiment.
Nevertheless, the states of Michigan and New York implemented fluoridation
experiments officially, while Masssachusetts officials apparently chose another
way: the "Sunday Cape Cod Times" of January 2, 1994, claims under the headline
"Mentally retarded children given fluoride before legal" that the Massachusetts
public health department recommended to the legislature that fluoridation
be studied at some state institutions, including schools for mentally retarded
(1). Wrentham and Belchertown state schools had clandestinely been selected.
Although Florence Birmingham, a trustee at the Wrentham School at the time
when fluoridation experiments were installed in that state institution of
mentally retarded children, testified already in 1954 before Congress about
these experiments (2), investigations started only in 1994, after reports
that state schools in the 1940´s and 50´s gave radioactive isotopes
to children in food to study digestive systems - without their consent. "When
I was appointed trustee of Wrentham State School for feebleminded children,
I learned there quite by accident that fluorine was used in the water supply",
Birmingham stated in 1954. After her inquiry, the director of the division
of dental health of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health referred
her to a report of 1945 and a subsequent report which named Wrentham State
School, Belchertown State School, and Fernald State School, as selected studies
for the fluoridation of water supplies (Fernald served as control). "The
trustees voted to halt fluoridation, but to my shocked surprise we were told
by the department that it was not an experiment and the fluoridation continues
on."

This was, of course, not the first experiment of that kind in Massachusetts.
In 1943, Time Magazine published a short article about a dentist´s
experiments in a Massachusetts madhouse (3). "Dr. Harootian gave capsules
of bone flour (rich in calcium, phosphorus, and fluorine) to nine women whose
teeth were decaying very rapidly. Decay seemed to stop almost at once."
Harootians heroic study at the Worcester State Hospital was even published
in the Journal of the American Dental Association (4). There he also mentions
a crucial case "of a patient in whom a labial cavity was prepared for filling,
but the actual filling was not inserted. In consequence, the cavity has,
on each examination in the succeeding eight months, been found to contain
food débris; but it shows no sign of caries."

While Harootian claimed his results (in nine patients!) "are so striking
as almost to eliminate coincidence as an explanation" (3), the American Dental
Association´s Council on Dental Therapeutics was not quite convinced
of the meaning of these alleged outcomes (5).

In the meantime, however, this kind of nonsense had found wide circulation:
"Various hospitals now ´pressure cook´ the soup-bones until they
become so soft that they may be readily mashed with a wooden spoon. Such
softened bones, made ´edible´, are fed to run-down patients in
combination with the soup, with a resultant unusually rapid recovery in many
instances. This further verifies the stimulating and nourishing value of
fluorine when it is utilized according to ´Mother Nature´s´
own plan. Yet certain authorities still maintain that fluorine is
´toxic´ in any combination, from any source" (6).

Acting against "Mother Nature´s plans", the manufacturer of a famous
brand of baby food had to change the composition when it turned out that
his product caused mottled teeth in children: "Pablum, a popular infant food
prepared from bone meal, formerly contained as much as 18 ppm. When this
amount of fluoride was found to be excessive -it produced mottled teeth -
manufacturers reduced the fluoride content of Pablum to between 1.33 and
2.12 ppm" (7). According to the corresponding patent (8), the product formerly
contained 2 percent "edible bonemeal", which ("veal bone ash") was later
replaced by tricalcium phosphate (9).